Right now Nora and I are living on Cerro Castillo (Castle Hill) in a quaint little hostel. The owner is name Patricio and this hostel is both his business and his casa. Patricio has inspired to one day turn mi casa into a hostel. What better way to meet people from all around the world and return the favor of the kindness I've experienced while traveling to the world? The hostel is located in Vina del Mar which is two hours away from Santiago and roughly twenty minutes away from Valparaiso, the San Francisco of Chile. Both cities are litered with "mini bus"- 18 person buses that scury about the cities, bringing Chilenos to and fro. the mini bus is the best and the worst thing in the world. They are the best thing because they're very efficent and effective and they perferm a very important job. They are the worst thing in the worst though for me and Nora because they rarely take us where we want to go (on the first try anyways). "Vas a Vina?" we soon found out means many things. "Vas a vina del mar?" we attempted a more thourough question. Again, failure. "VAS A WINA DEL MAR?" We yell from now on "A RELOJ DE FLORES? ACROSS THE STREET FROM THE ARTISTS BEACH AND DOWN THE HILL FROM THE PINK CAFE? PLEASE TAKE US HOME!" And so we'll see where that takes us tomorrow.
Still though, despite the fact that we rarely end up where we'd planned on going- ConCon instead of Huron, Plaza Vina instead of Vina del Mar, Pajaritos instead of Mora- we've never had a bad time. On the countrary, we always discover something great- dilicious Pisco Sours, a small quiet beach or a beautiful view of the lights of Vina during an enjoyable ride through the hills of Valparaiso. I think that's the best part of going into your vacation with few plans beacuse whatever you get is always an adventure and never a disappointment.
On that note, I am happy to say that I have found the first farm I'm going to be staying on. I was starting to panic knowing that Nora would be going to start studying in a little over a week and I still have nowhere to go. A few farms looked promising but it just wasn't working out. So I picked up my thick wwoof list, covered in marks, stars, exclamation marks, and thick red lines crossing out farms that are too far away or just not what I'm looking for and as I held it in my hand I asked it to give me something good. Please let it work out, I hoped. And so I told Nora it was time I stared calling the farms that I wanted to go to but that hadn't responded to my emails. Nora sat on the edge of my bed offering moral support as I dialed. I took a deep breath and pressed send. For any of you who don't know, speaking a foreign language is hard enough, but speaking a foreign language on the phone is about five times harder. There is no body language to pick up on, no gestures to read, it's harder to pick up on verbal cues and just generally more overwhelming. All of that coupled with the fact that the Chilean accent is fairly difficult to follow made me very nervous. I had no idea what to expect, so I was shocked to find out that I understood exactly what Adriana was saying and even better, she was in Vina for the day and wanted to meet up.
Adriana is Argentinian and living on an avacado farm in a valley between Santiago and Valparaiso. She says there is not much work to do with the avocados- paltas, as they're called here- but that on a farm there is always plenty of work to do. She was very honest with me and told me that she's distrustful of North Americans becuase in her experience they are cold and flaky people. I'm looking forward to give her a different view of them. She's eager to help her wwoofers learn Spanish and equally eager to learn about where they're from. She lives by herself and gives yoga lessons on the weekends. She seems incredibly kind and warm and I can't wait to get to know her more!
Hasta proxima,
chao,
Isa
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